Bottom line? No. If you are a good photographer, the D200 will allow
you to take good pictures with more artistic control. If you are a bad
photographer, nothing can save you.

Hah hah. April fool.

"PS    Is the Canon 20D better then the Nikon D70? "

I have found it to be, having made exactly that transition about 9
months ago, but I base that solely on two factors:

1.) The large thumbwheel that Canon uses for aperture control and the
index-finger scroller for shutter make more intuative sense to me than
Nikon's (very similar but tactilely different) way of doing it. I work
about 66% faster with the Canon. I think some people are wired one way
and some the other, and this is really just a preference thing.

2.) I've found that Canon has vastly better high-ISO performance, and
that's extremely helpful to about half of what I do.

As for your original question: having not used the D200, I couldn't
say. I hear it has better noise than the D70 at high ISOs, which I
imagine could help. And the megapixel difference from 6 to 8.2 with the
20D has been of great use to me; I can only imagine the jump upwards of
10 would be even more useful.

I made the transition because I was unhappy with how I'd invested in
Nikon regarding lenses and I was looking at a total overhaul anyway. I
wanted to be on a path that could lead to full frame, and Nikon didn't
seem to be making any promises. That said, I'm glad I made the jump, if
only for the two reasons stated above.

Will

What are you shooting? Vacation snapshots? Indoor sporting events? Jazz
concerts in low light?

I've begun printing at 13"x19" and could definitely use more pixels.
OTOH the file sizes will be a bear.

There are a few situations where mirror lockup would be nice.

The viewfinder is supposed to be bigger, that's actually quite important
though I don't know how much better it is without a side by side
comparison & there aren't any demo models in stores.

As I understand the noise is not much better but it handles blown
highlights more smoothly. The added pixels should be a real improvement
in image quality though.

Maybe, the viewfinder is much better(my sister in law has the D70 feels
like you are looking in a cave), not a big difference in mp but you can
get 8x12 at 300ppi from the 10mp. What lenses you have will make the
difference, the 18-70 kit lens from Nikon has the reputation of being
much better than the Canon kit lens. If you have more than one lens,
why switch, stay with the Nikon. D20 is a minor step up from the D70,
again it has a better viewfinder.

Tom

The Canon 5D is better than both....

Probably not, though you'll get somewhat better enlargeability of
course.  But maybe -- depending on what items are holding you back.
If you can't *tell* what's holding you back, it's not that likely that
a hardware change will fix it.

I just traded up a Fuji S2 (a D100-general 6MP DSLR) to a D200.
Here's why *I* did it:

o  iTTL flash (since the D70 has iTTL, this will not be *your* reason)
o  Faster auto-focus
o  Metering with pre-AF lenses (I was using them without metering and
  that's okay, but sometimes slows me down at the wrong moment)
o  Maybe better low-light (the S2 was already pretty darned good there)

Some other reasons that aren't big deals to me, but could be to
someone:

o  Faster frame-rate (5FPS)
o  Longer burst (19 vs. 7)
o  Allegedly tougher and better sealed body
o  Better continuous auto-focus